


In the Shallows of the River Styx

by afailureofheart



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:12:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afailureofheart/pseuds/afailureofheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis is the grim reaper and Harry keeps almost dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Shallows of the River Styx

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own. Obviously none of this is real. I really hope you like it!

Louis supposes at some point he must have been someone. He has a name, he has likes and dislikes. The only thing he doesn’t have is memories, but Louis knows lots about memories. The thing about meeting everyone right before they die is it gives you a pretty good understanding of hindsight.

When it comes to death there are two kinds of people. The people who accept their death and the people who fight it. Those who welcome Louis and the darkness with open arms usually take the time to remember their lives. Almost like a one minute movie of everything that ever happened to them all mashed up. From their first memory to their last. A mirage of how they think they’ve spent their lives. Louis has seen enough to know better though. The reels of peoples lives are usually less than honest. People have a tendency to construct these fantasies at the end, blocking out all the horrible things they’ve done and seen. Basking in the illusion of happiness before they die seems to be the only way some people can cope with their own death.

The people who fight their death, clinging to their last strands of life, their souls just barely slipping through their fingers, they’re not usually as optimistic.  The last thing these people think about is all their regrets. Everything they should have done, or could have done, and how its too late. They struggle and they fight, but Louis’ always had the feeling that deep down they know it's futile.  They know what death is, cold and empty, a meaningless void.

Louis’ not sure they’re right though. He’s been in enough churches, synagogues and mosques to know that humans have the incredible ability to be hopeful. And while he usually chuckles at the notion of heaven, or an afterlife, he can’t help but admire their ability to believe in more.

Louis doesn’t know very much about death. Which you might not expect because he’s the grim reaper. The one who comes to collect your soul and effectively end who ever it is who you were. All he knows is what he feels. Every time someone dies and their soul is about to leave their body Louis feels it. He’s not sure when it started, because if he’s honest he’s not sure when he started, but its a pull almost. Like he’s needed. He’ll appear somewhere, a dark alley, a hospital, an intersection, those are usually the big ones, and he’ll find his soul. Sometimes they’re not dead yet. Sometimes they’ve been dead for awhile.

Death is always different. People experience it in different ways, the only consistency being that everyone does it alone. For some people its a relief, for others its terrifying. Death is the most selfish thing anyone can experience. There are very few people who don’t want to die because of someone else, someone they can’t bear to let go of, but Louis has learned those people are few and far between. They’re the ones that make Louis hope that maybe there is something else out there; the single mother fearing for her child, the old man so reluctant to part with his first and last love. It just seems like they’re the people who deserve peace, but really who’s Louis to judge, he’s just the soul collector.

Louis doesn’t measure time in years, or months, or weeks. He measures time in good souls. You see, death is constant, never ending. For each new life one is taken away. The world must live in balance. Louis can be summoned to a soul, maybe a baby whose little lungs weren’t strong enough for the harsh world it was brought into, and he’ll arrive in the hospital room, little more than a ghost, though more often than not Louis suspects he wouldn’t be noticed amongst the grief anyway, and it’s his job to wait until that soul is ready to be taken. Its not a matter of when they want to go, or when they accept their death, its just when their soul departs from their body, their human lives essentially over, whether they’re ready for it or not.

Death isn’t a science. There are no measurements and instruments to guarantee that there are no mistakes. This means that sometimes mistakes are made, not usually, but its been known to happen. Sometimes Louis will be summoned to someone who’s on the brink of death but they manage to pull through, or sometimes he’ll arrive just as what should be a fatal accident occurs, only the person somehow managaes to live to tell the tale. This is what happened on the day Louis met the boy with the curls. Louis arrived in a park. It was probably about dusk, the trees casting long shadows on the grass as the light lay blue on everything in sight. He heard sobbing, the heaving breaths of someone on the brink of hysteria. Turning toward it he searched for the reason he had been summoned.  

A young girl sat hunched over someone lying in her lap below a large oak tree. She couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve, dark hair obscuring her face. She was shaking, desperately clutching the person in front of her. As Louis ventured closer he saw tiny corduroy pants and a pair scuffed up shoes too small for anyone but a young child. He sighed, it was always a shame when they died young.

He strode up to the pair. He still couldn’t tell if the boy was dead or not. It seemed, judging by the broken tree branch and blood Louis now saw staining the girl’s pants, that the little boy had fallen from the oak tree. A ten foot fall for a young child meant that Louis probably wouldn’t have to wait long. Louis leaned in between the pair to try and get a better look at the boy. What he saw left him speechless.

Louis has seen death in many different forms. He’s seen bloody carnage, and quiet desperation.  However, what he saw before him in that dusky park was innocence. The boy’s light curls crowned a milky complexion, drained and waxy looking. His long eyelashes fluttered like he was on the brink of something, plump lips pale and slightly parted as labored breaths slipped between them.

Louis stared absorbed by the child, caught between anticipation and desperation. He felt torn between wanting the boy to die quickly and be released, and desperately wanting him to live, not wanting something so innocent and pure to be unjustly torn away. However, this death was no different than any other, though, for some reason Louis certainly felt different about it.  Whether the boy lived or died was not up to him, he was as helpless a pawn in the cruel workings of the universe as the humans were.

Sitting down on the grass he waited. The blood continued to bloom on the girl’s pants, but the boy’s breath seemed to even out. His small chest rising and falling more regularly. No one came, and the girl didn’t make any move to try and find help. The light turned velvety as it grew darker, softening the lines of everything, making them smooth. Louis continued to wait.

Finally, he felt a pull towards another place. This meant the boy would live and Louis would move on. Part of him was disappointed to leave the little boy’s side. He felt strangely toward the little boy, in fact the simple notion that he felt anything towards him at all was strange. Louis left him reluctantly, but he knew deep inside the boy was better off not seeing Louis again until he was old and unrecognizable. Louis was pulled to a car wreck in the middle of a blizzard, but his thoughts still lingered on snow eyelids framed in long lashes.  

*

The next time Louis met the boy with the curls he wasn’t dying. In fact he was laughing. It was a tinkling sound that Louis would never forget. His head was thrown back, plump lips stretched wide into an easy grin. He looked about twelve. A green sweater sweater swamped his small frame but brought out his bright green eyes. Eyes that reminded Louis of northern lights and thick moss. He was sitting in the passenger seat of a red volvo next to a smiling brown haired woman Louis took to be his mother. She had soft wrinkles next to her smiling eyes, and light brown hair just like the little boy. The car was stopped at a stop sign.

It wasn’t long after Louis arrived that he spotted the reason why he was summoned. A battered black truck, with one of the headlights smashed, was barrelling towards the car. Louis felt frantic. He wanted to warn them. He wanted to save the boy. The boy who had just begin to grow up, a few blemishes coloring his forehead. The boy whose laugh could bring joy to anyone who heard it. He deserved to live. He deserved longer. Louis was sure. However, once again this changed nothing. The little boy had already cheated death once, he didn’t stand much of a chance.

The screech of crunching metal filled the air and the two cars collided, sparks and smoke filling the air. Pieces of car flew across the road, and the last thing Louis saw before he was pulled away was a small green figured slumped into an airbag.

Louis was confused to say the least. So fine, the boy didn’t die the first time mistakes happen. But to survive a ten foot fall and a car crash, and to have Louis summoned both times? Nothing like that had ever happened. Even more so, the boy wasn’t just anyone. He was special. Louis was sure. In his entire existence Louis had never seen anyone so beautiful, and delicate in death or life. Both laughter and labored breathing like life’s most beautiful compositions.

It felt like a long time before Louis saw the boy again. Every time he felt a pull he was flooded with excitement that he might see the boy again, and anxiety at the thought of him being hurt. There were so many souls to be collected. The cycle of life and death hadn’t stopped just because Louis finally found someone who gave his existence meaning. He still collected souls, living in the cracks of other peoples lives, but now he had a purpose, he had something to look forward to.

*

Louis was pulled to a hospital. It was a beige room with a cot and a curtain divider. A wrinkled man lay in the hospital bed surrounded by family. Not an unfamiliar scene to Louis. He stood by the window waiting, absent mindedly running his finger up and down the windowsill feeling relieved but once again disappointed that it wasn’t a green eyed boy laying in the hospital bed.

“Harry why don’t you wait outside for a minute dear,” a woman’s voice said. Louis looked up, searching for the speaker, but found instead the very subject of his thoughts. There was the boy with the curly hair, sitting right in front of Louis’s very eyes. Only now he had a name, Harry.

His eyes were puffy and his nose was red, but other than that he looked healthy. Louis felt like all of his dreams were coming true. Harry looked the same, but different. He was older now, his curls longer and disheveled, held out of his face by a red scarf. His features looked more balanced in his broad face, not as exaggerated as they had been when he was younger, but his lips were still thick and red standing out brightly from his pale skin. Louis sighed, he was beautiful.

The woman gave Harry’s shoulder a squeeze as he pulled himself out the of chair. Tattoos littered one of his arms, while the other was blank save for some words scribbled in the crook of his arm. Age had made him long and lean, unlike the child Louis had last seen, with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks.  

It was much too soon that Harry left, closing the door and leaving Louis alone in the room with his family. Louis wished with all his might he could follow him out the door, and into the world, but Louis was confined to the scenes of death so all he could do was wait and hope Harry came back before the elderly man’s soul departed.

He didn’t. Louis went back to waiting for Harry, only this time he checked every bedside for him.

*

The next time it was a dark apartment. There was lots of glass and spilled wine. Harry was crying holding a man in his arms. He looked like he was in his early thirties. His hair was shorter, styled away from his face with product. There were fine lines on his face, and dark circles under his eyes. Louis noticed the ring on his hand immediately. He felt a little bit betrayed.

He knew that Harry didn’t know he existed. Harry lived in the real world. Harry lived. Louis wasn’t sure what he was, but he knew he could never be what Harry needed. He couldn’t be the man that Harry held in his arms, sobbing through choked breathes, saying things were going to be okay, when they so clearly weren’t going to be. He couldn’t share this apartment with Harry like this man did. Washing dishes, and bickering over household tasks wasn’t in the cards for Louis even if Harry made him want those things.

Louis sat in that dark kitchen, for what felt like an eternity, watching the man he realized he loved loving someone else. He couldn’t help but notice that love everywhere. It was in the pictures on the fridge, and calendar next to the cupboard. These were things that the two men shared. Things Louis would never share.

The worst part of all was not seeing Harry love someone else. It was seeing Harry in so much pain. At least Louis could be comforted knowing Harry was happy and in love, but Harry’s pain and grief felt too much like his own.

When Louis finally felt the man’s soul departing he felt relieved. Never before had he ever needed someone to die so much. Louis left that apartment knowing two things, he was in love with Harry, and he never wanted to see him again.

For the most part Louis got his wish. He saw Harry rarely, in the background of other people’s death. He cherished those moments, and hated them too for they meant he had to see Harry in pain, but they were all he had.

Louis didn’t even really understand loving Harry. It just seemed like something that was true. Just like Louis didn’t understand death, it was just there. Louis had seen something in Harry he never saw in anyone else. It could have hope. It could have just been himself, but whatever it was Louis couldn’t unsee it.

In some ways it gave him clarity, made him a little more human. He could understand why humans had gone to such great lengths creating religions and gods that would let them keep living, let them keep loving, even after they were gone. How could you accept that this could just end? How could you accept that the totality of human existence was held between your head and your feet and the second that your body ceased to live so would you? It made everything seem so futile, there had to be more. For Harry’s sake, and sometimes his own, Louis hoped there was more.

*

The last time Louis saw Harry he was old. He was sitting in an overstuffed chair by a fire. His green eyes were bright against his pale skin, and his stomach strained against his green sweater. He had short white hair, and spectacles. Louis sighed, he was still beautiful.

Harry wasn’t moving when Louis arrived. It wasn’t clear how long he’d been dead for, but Louis didn’t have to wait long before he felt his soul leaving his body. Each soul was different. Some manifested as smoke, or mist. Some were more like ghostly figures. Harry’s soul was looked like a version of Harry Louis had never met. His hair was curly, hanging in a fringe over his forehead. He didn’t have any tattoos, and just the tiniest bit of baby fat clung to his cheeks. He looked about sixteen.

“Oops,” he giggled at Louis, dimple poking into his fleshy cheeks. No soul had ever spoken to Louis, but Louis wasn’t really surprised. Harry had never been like anyone else in life, why should death be any different?

“Hi,” Louis smiled back. Harry stretched a hand out to Louis, and he took it. As he felt the heat of Harry’s palm against his own he knew. Harry was his forever. His piece of heaven. Maybe there was no god, and maybe everything people believed in wasn’t real but there was more to life. Harry was proof of that.

  


 


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